Lynn Emanuel

“Like God,you hover above the page staring downon a small town. Outside a windowsome scenery loafs in a sleepy hammockof pastoral prose and here is a mongrelloping and here is a train approachingthe station in three long sentences andhere are the people in galoshes waiting.But you know this story about the galoshesis really About Your Life, so, like a diverclimbing over the side of a boat and downinto the ocean, you climb, sentenceby sentence, into this story on this page.You have been expecting yourselfas a woman who purrs by in a dressby Patou, and a porter manacled tothe luggage, and a man stalking acrossthe page like a black cloud in a bad mood.These are your fellow travelers andyou are a face behind or inside thesefaces, a heartbeat in the volley of theseheartbeats, as you choose, out of allthe journeys, the journey of a manwith a mustache scented faintly withPrince Albert. "He must be a secretsensualist," you think and your awarenessdrifts to his trench coat, worn, softened,and flabby, a coat with a lobotomy, justas the train pulls into the station.No, you would prefer another stopin a later chapter where the climate isaffable and sleek. But the passengersare disembarking, and you did notchoose to be in the story of the womanin the white dress which is as cool andevil as a glass of radioactive milk. Youdid not choose to be in the story of thematron whose bosom is like the prowof a ship and who is launched towardlunch at the Hotel Pierre, or even thestory of the dog-on-a-leash, even thoughthis is now your story: the story of theperson-who-had-to-take-the-train-and-walk-the-dark-road described hurriedlyby someone sitting at the tavern so you coulddiscover it, although you knew all alongthe road would be there, you, who havebeen hovering above this page, holdingthe book in your hands, like God, reading.”

“Despite my lovely diction I am going to die.”